Pantheon BooksProduct DescriptionYears ago when House of Leaves was first being passed around it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth -- musicians tattoo artists programmers strippers environmentalists and adrenaline junkies -- the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children.
Now for the first time this astonishing novel is made available in book form complete with the original colored words vertical footnotes and newly added second and third appendices.
The story remains unchanged focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
Of course?? neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility?? until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story -- of creature darkness?? of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door?? and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through"r walls and consume all their dreams.Amazon.com ReviewHad The Blair Witch Project been a book instead of a film?? and had it been written by?? say?? Nabokov at his most playful?? revised by Stephen King at his most cerebral?? and typeset by the futurist editors of Blast at their most avant-garde?? the result might have been something like House of Leaves. Mark Z. Danielewski's first novel has a lot going on: notably the discovery of a pseudoacademic monograph called The Navidson Record?? written by a blind man named Zampan??? about a nonexistent documentary film--which itself is about a photojournalist who finds a house that has supernatural?? surreal qualities. (The inner dimensions?? for example?? are measurably larger than the outer ones.) In addition to this Russian-doll layering of narrators?? Danielewski packs in poems?? scientific lists?? collages?? Polaroids?? appendices of fake correspondence and " single lines of prose placed any which way on the page?? crossed-out passages?? and so on.
Now that we've reached the post-postmodern era?? presumably there's nobody left who needs liberating from the strictures of conventional fiction. So apart from its narrative high jinks?? what does House of Leaves have to offer? According to Johnny Truant?? the tattoo-shop apprenti